Rail commuters push for ticket refunds in wake of storms

Updated 2:18 pm, Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Timothy Beeble commutes from his home in Bethel to work in Stamford, but train service along Metro-North's Danbury Branch can often be suspended as it was due to the Feb. 8 blizzard.

Beeble pays $88 for a monthly commuter pass and told legislators at a hearing in Hartford last Wednesday that it's indefensible for the railroad not to provide credits or refunds when service is not available.

"The fact is when a Metro-North customer buys a weekly or monthly ticket from Metro-North, they are pre-paying for train service for a specific time frame," said Beeble, a member of the Connecticut Rail Commuter Council who also serves as Stamford's community development director.

"If Metro-North cancels service for more than a day, they have failed to provide the service for which they have collected fares."

Beeble spoke in support of proposed legislation that would require Metro-North to extend the validity of weekly and monthly tickets as credit for customers after service outages lasting more than 48 hours.

State DOT Commissioner James Redeker told legislators that while he understands the inconvenience service outages create, the policy would produce administrative gridlock in the event of the types of outages experienced after recent storms.

The price of monthly tickets represents about half the rate that daily and round-trip ticket buyers pay for travel, a discounted rate enabled by the subsidy the state pays to support the rail service, Redeker said.

In 2012, Metro-North's New Haven Line's fare operating ratio -- the proportion of costs paid for by total ticket sale revenues -- was 76 percent, the highest in the country.

Redeker also questioned whether the state can be held accountable for outages in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, Tropical Storm Irene and the recent blizzard, events where the state and railroad had no power to prevent damage to the system, Redeker said.

"How much am I supposed to refund and does this snowstorm count?" Redeker said, referencing last week's blizzard.

"We had a federal emergency declaration, and the highways were closed. We don't try to not run trains and I don't think we're able to fully predict the administrative and budgeting impact of this as well."

The bill's sponsor, State Rep. Gail Lavielle, R-Wilton, said allowing the railroad 48 hours to get service running strikes a balance between fairness for commuters and acknowledging the difficult challenge of bouncing back from storms to provide service.

"We give them some latitude up to 47 hours and 59 minutes but once it reaches 48 hours it really isn't fair to not do something to offset it," she said.

The proposal is backed by the Connecticut Rail Commuter Council, a state appointed rail watchdog group, which unsuccessfully sought to include the refund policy as part of a Metro-North Customer Bill of Rights approved in late 2011 to help define customer service and safety standards for riders.

Jim Cameron, chairman of the Connecticut Commuter Rail Council said that supporters of the expanded refund or credit realized that they would need legislative action to correct what they view as consumer protection issue.

Cameron said using the discounted fare paid by monthly and weekly ticket holders compared to single ticket buyers to argue that riders are not entitled to be credited for the days of service outages is flawed because the discounts are in part to reward daily and more frequent users for choosing to use mass transit.

The policy is especially inequitable for users of the Danbury and Waterbury branch lines who have endured longer rail outages than main line stations in the wake of Superstorm Sandy this year and Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.

"The issue at hand is why is the railroad selling tickets and not providing service and not crediting riders for that service," Cameron said.

"We have the highest fares of any railroad in the United States and that is because we have the lowest subsidy. I think for those high fares, riders deserve either a train ride, alternate bus service or credit for the fare."